I served in the US Army from 1963-1965, a draftee. The second year of this was spent in an armored scouting unit stationed by the DMZ in Korea. This is an isolated area in mountainous country. In 1964, Korea was still recovering from the war which had ended 11 years earlier. This area with filled with small villages. As you got closer to the DMZ, much of the area was closed to civilians.

This photo was taken near the top of a hill that bordered right on the DMZ. We are looking south, towards Seoul. These two soldiers are in the South Korean Army. They maintained a small forward observation post near the crest of the hill. Our unit maintained a base camp at the foot of the hill, where we sent out radar patrols across the DMZ at night, looking for infiltrators from the north. I spent a month in this base camp in 1964.

In the 1970s, Camp Kaiser, where our cavalry unit was stationed, was turned over to the Korean Army. In the last few years, most of the US soldiers have been withdrawn from the DMZ. A large portion of the soldiers stationed in Korea have quietly been removed and sent to make up shortfalls in Iraq and Afghanistan.